PF pfctl and different count of states

Hi guys,

I'm want to play around with Stateful Tracking Options.
First step was starting to analyze "normal traffic" and the count of states to a specific machine.

I'm using this both commands pfctl -vvsr and pfctl -ss
The output shows a big list. So here comes grep to break down the output to a more readable output.

sudo pfctl -vvsr | grep -A2 "from any to x.x.x.x" | grep -A2 igb0 | grep -A2 https
@24 pass quick on igb0 inet proto tcp from any to x.x.x.x port = https flags S/SA keep state
[ Evaluations: 154365 Packets: 843136 Bytes: 562069982 States: 8 ]
[ Inserted: uid 0 pid 63274 State Creations: 12946 ]


As you can see there is a state count of 8

Displaying the states itself with pfctl -ss and doing some grep and line count shows a different count. To double check the output I also count by hand without using wc

sudo pfctl -ss | grep x.x.x.x | grep 443 | grep "<-" | wc -l
No ALTQ support in kernel
ALTQ related functions disabled
10


The commands are sent simultaneously via 2 ssh sessions with mputty. It's a bit surprising that the counts are different. Sometime the count corresponds with the output from both commands. When the load is much heavier I always have different values.

I suppose that pfctl -vvsr generates a big output which needs some time until it hits to rule 24. During these few Milli seconds the states have changed and so I get different outputs.

How do you see that?
 
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